Jayanha
Appearance Jan is quite short with very pale blonde hair bleached even paler by long hours in the sun. She has wide set brown eyes and seems to have a nervous half-smile on her face most of the time. Jan is deeply tanned and has a lithe, muscled frame that has started to soften with age. She favours loose, light coloured robes and drapes when she is not in armour and has a simple and plain taste in clothes. Personality Jan is painfully shy around people she does not know well and uncomfortable in crowds, a legacy of her youth spent well away from the large cities and settlements of Azeroth. She is devout and private, deeply bound by notions of duty and propriety and honest to a fault. She adores and respects her father above every one else and sees family bonds as the most important and powerful there are. She feels an affinity with Goblins, appreciating their uncomplicated approach to life, and once dreamt of founding a pseudo-monastic community of goblins and humans united in their worship of the light. Many years of living alongside them has taught her how unlikely this dream is to happen but she holds on to it in some way. Jan tends to be very uncomfortable in the presence of priests and highly ranked clergy, she knows that her father had several dreams of what she might become and she has lived up to none of them. A servant of the light in one of the grand cathedrals was his fondest hope, and seeing people who have attained this always reminds her painfully that, in her eyes, she has not lived up to her father's aspirations for her. Background Jan's father, Berld, was a missionary of a kind, a restless and energetic priest of the light who decided to take the Stormwind teachings to the far south of both continents. He spent many years travelling Tanaris and Stranglethorn preaching and teaching to anyone who would listen. During these wanderings he met and married Astald, a woman born to a trading family based in Booty Bay who had grown up with the jungles all around her. In fairly short course Jayanha was born to them. Jan's early life was dominated by movement. Her father and mother travelled with the trade caravans that roamed the jungles and deserts of the south, rarely spending more than a month or two in any fixed location. Her mother taught her much about how to survive in these harsh places, while her father instilled in her a deep and abiding faith in the light. While nominally still trying to teach the ways of the light to the people they met her father spent a lot of his time trading and exploring, helping his in-laws built up a wider network of contacts. This made them all comfortably wealthy after several years of hard work but left Berld feeling vaguely guilty at how little energy he devoted to his faith. When Jan was in her late twenties and a fairly well established trader in her own right tragedy struck the family. Astald died of a snakebite, a simple moment of carelessness taking her away from Berld and Jan. Devastated by this Berld decided that it was time to leave the caravans and to return to the solid core of his faith. He took his share of the profit, which was enough for him to live comfortably on, and retired to Stormwind to devote his life to prayer and study. Jan felt she could do nothing but follow him, despite his assurances that she was free to do as she wished. Duty allowed nothing else. So she left everything she knew behind and travelled with him to the city. She found it overwhelming, a feeling that has never really left her, and has never fully settled into the rhythms of city life. Years later Jan still acts as a broker for her mother's family, managing their sales in Stormwind and investing her own money with other trading associations. She is a canny and careful investor and so far shows no inclination to become ultra wealthy or to become bankrupt. The rest of her time is spent looking after her father, praying and studying the teachings and documents available to her in Stormwind. Much of this is new to her, her faith previously being informed by has father's teachings alone. Of late she has started to spend time working for or with Immortalis when she can as well. History with Immortalis Spending her time in the Cathedral district meant that she heard and saw members of Immortalis frequently. Knowing that her oratorical skills were lacking and that she was a terrible healer, Jan saw service with them as a good way to serve a noble cause using the only skills she really has - she can survive almost anywhere and hold her own in a fight. Skills far better suited to a guild of warriors than a position in the Cathedral! Category:Character